Green House Gases Emission in Washington State

Authors: Aishwarya Saibewar, Karthika Selvaraj, David Abney

Date: 12/07/2023

Sector wise emissions in WA state

It can be observed that “Power Plants” are the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions followed by “Pulp and Paper”, “Petroleum Systems”, and “Suppliers”.

County wise emissions in WA

Lewis has the highest rate of greenhouse emissions, followed by King, Whatcom, and Cowlitz.

GHG Emission Trend

It can be observed that the emissions have increased by 61% from 2012 – 2019, before declining to 38.1M emissions in 2021.

Total Emissions trend in top 5 sectors

Creating a multi line graph in different colors to display the greenhouse gases emissions trend in top 5 sectors in WA state.

To avoid overlapping of text encoding in the multi line graph. Creating separate plots and aligning then individually.

Finally layering all plots into a single multi-line graph.

It can be seen that “Power Plants” are the major contributors to emissions followed by Suppliers, and Pulp and Paper. It can be observed that the emissions from power plants increased between 2012-2018 and peaked in 2019, and declined in 2020 and 2021, potentially due to COVID-19. While emission trends of the Supplier, Pulp and Paper, and Petroleum Systems sectors remain consistent, the emissions from Metals tend to decline over the last decade.

Greenhouse Emissions by Gas

Creating a multi line graph in different colors to display the Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Gas trend in WA state.

Since the dataset contains information of Carbon Dioxide (MTCO2e),Biogenic Carbon Dioxide (MTCO2e),PFCs (MTCO2e),Methane (MTCO2e) in separate columns. Creating separate plots and layering them together into a multi-line graph at the end.

It can be seen that CO2 emissions are significantly higher in WA compared to the other gases. Over the last decade, it can be observed that CO2 emissions have increased by approximately 80%. While the emissions of Biogenic CO2, methane, and PFCs remain consistent.

Since CO2 and Biogenic CO2 emissions are higher compared to other gases. A line chart with a confidence interval band is used to show the variability associated with the emissions of the gas between the years 2012-2021.

Renewable Energy Consumption Over Time

Creating a line graph to visualize the trends in the energy consumption in Washington State for the year 2012 to 2021

The line graph is layered with the text for the accessibility

The visual shows that the Hydropower is the most consumed energy in the state of washington and also the Solar energy consumption has increased exponentially over the period. There is a dip in hydropower and wind energy while the solar energy spiked in 2019.

The bar graph shows fuel type used by the industries. Most industries in Washington uses Natural Gas.

Green House Gas Emission : Washington State

A Cholorpleth map is created to visualize the distribution of green house gas emisions by counties in the Washington state

Lewis County has the most emission. This could also because of the Power plant located.

State with High Renewable Energy Generation

The Map is created to understand the renewable energy generation across the country

Washington Rank number 3 in renewable energy generation

Power Plant

Summary Graphs

This line chart is used to display the amount of electricity produced by the top 5 fuel types used by power plants each year. The amount of electricity generated is a quantitative variable and the most important for comparing the fuel types, so it has been placed on the Y axis. Year, which is a nominal variable, was put along the X axis so the data could be easily read from left to right. Then the colors and a text label were used to represent the fuel type, which is categorical. The legend was hidden, because it wasn’t necessary with the text label. We can see that hydroelectric power is going down and natural gas is going up, so we need to check why this is occuring.

Total electricity generated by each energy source summed between 2012 and 2021. It is sorted in descending order to see the types that are porducing the most electricity, but the bar graph also allows us to compare the resources that produce less energy. Also the energy types are color encoded to match certain features about the resouce.

To compare the details of the two most used fuel types, a bar graph of the percentage change from the previous year was paired with scatter plots of the increases based on average precipitation. Both sets of charts use position to display the percentage change variable. The top set of graphs use bars because there is only one quantitative variable being measured over the year. The type of fuel used is encoded using colors that match the fuel type. A blue color for hydroelectric because of its use of water and an orange color was used for encoding natural gas because it is burned. The bottom set of graphs measures two quantitative variables, so it uses a scatter plot along with a regression line to display the relationship.

Similar comparsion to Hydroelectric and Natural gas with percentage change between the years.

The solar electricity production was color encoded as yellow to differentiate it from the other energy sources. We have the average output from the 4 solar plants between 2012 and 2021 on the left and then on the right, a bar graph showing the total electricity produced from solar plants each year on the right. Adams Nielson Solar plant opened in October of 2018 and this is the reason for the large increase between 2018 and 2019.

This was a graph to show the differences in the emissions generated by coal compared to natural gas. We have two quantitative variable we are display, so we use position for electricity and emissions. The nominal variable for energy type is using a color encoding to display a 3rd variable.